


Wolf Like Me

by voxDei



Series: Space Monsters [2]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Death, Emotional Trauma, F/M, Gore, Species Swap, all them fun things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 20:17:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12489992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxDei/pseuds/voxDei
Summary: Life is hard enough without accidentally transferring your humanity to your undead pet, and getting her condition in return.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My hand slipped.

There’s ringing in her ears and a throbbing in her chest, and her mouth tastes like bile. She groans and tries to roll over, wincing at the light against her eyelids. Then her eyes snap open and she recoils, screeching; light! Sunlight! Fuck, shit, get away, it’ll burn—

But it doesn’t.

She’s skittered back out of the splash of light from the huge arching windows, gasping reflexively, but she’s not burned. Nothing hurts. Well, her throat hurts, and her stomach, but her skin is unmarked. She’s fine. 

“What the cocking fuck.”

Then she winces again, because talking hurts, and she sees the puddle of congealed blackish blood that must have come from her stomach and groans. Her chest is still throbbing steadily and she presses a hand to her sternum in irritation and feels the pulse through the skin and—

Holy shit that’s a heartbeat.

She, quite calmly, does a flying backflip off the handle and into the sea.

“NOPE. NOPE WHATEVER THE COCKING FUCK THIS IS. WHAT THE FUCK, JUST— WHAT THE FUCK!”

She’s so busy yelling she almost doesn’t notice him until she starts to smell something burning. 

“Oh, shit. Shit!”

He’s lying a few yards away, one leg and half an arm in the same patch of sunlight, and theres wisps of smoke seeping out from his clothes. She scrambles over to him and grabs his other arm, dragging him back away from the light.

“Shit, shit, why is this so hard…”

He shows no signs of waking and she drags him back near the door, out of the range of the light. Her hands are shaking and she clenches them into fists to stop it, swallowing nervously. There’s bile across his mouth; he must have vomited too. Even with her senses diminished she can smell it. She jabs at her teeth with her tongue; flat, blunt, human teeth. She swallows again and reaches for his mouth.

Oh. Yep. Those are fangs.

She takes a shuddery breath — fuck, she actually needs to do that now — and gingerly opens one of his eyes. It’s red with burst veins, bleeding scarlet into the iris. There’s no pulse at his throat, no rise of his chest; he could very well be dead.

_I mean, technically, he is…_

Okay, okay. She takes a deep breath, sitting back on her heels. Okay. He’s vampire and she’s human now. Their species flipped? Switched places? Some freak turning accident? Who the fuck knows. Can’t dwell on that now, gotta… gotta get him secure, first thing. Freshly turned, even with his ordinary self control, there’s no telling what he could do. 

It takes her almost half an hour to drag him down to one of the specimen rooms. She would have gone for the prison but it’s too far away, she can’t take the chance of him waking before she puts a sturdy wall between them. 

She locks him in, slumped against the far wall of the chamber; it’s got an examination table and some gear, and a thick plate glass window spanning the wall next to the door. That done, she puts her head in her hands and tries not to hyperventilate.

“Holy shit, hooooooly shit…” 

She’s actually honest-to-god panicking here. She feels so _vulnerable_ , every strength she had stripped away and, and given to _him_. She laughs hoarsely, actually feeling grateful for his rabid self-control. No way he’d let himself savage her, he’d be reasonable, he’s gotta be. Fuck, she can hear his voice now: _what did you do, what did you do?_

“What did you do…”

She jumps and whirls, bristling on instinct. He’s braced himself against the glass, awake and staring, and she can see panic on his face, matching her own. Her hands are shaking again.

“This wasn’t me—”

“WE HAD A DEAL,” he roars, pounding on the glass with one fist, “YOU PROMISED, YOU—”

“I didn’t do it! I swear, this wasn’t me, I swear on Hadrian!”

He stops, eyes narrowed. “…what?”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and steps closer, opening her mouth to show human teeth. “We’ve switched…”

His face is pure horror. “What… how…”

Her hands spasm in some approximation of a shrug. “That artifact maybe? I don’t fucking know, I don’t…” She sinks her head into her hands again, clutching her skull. Behind the glass Alad swallows roughly, feeling the deep wrongness of his body and trying to contain his own panic.

“Okay… okay, just let me out and we can figure this out, we can fix this”

She barks out a harsh laugh. “Not a chance, you’re freshly made. Way too volatile to be around humans yet.” 

He opens his mouth to protest, but the cramping in his stomach proves him wrong before he can speak; he’s damnably hungry. He grits his teeth, clamping down on another surge of horror. “How… how long until I am… stable?”

She runs her hands through her hair, distracted. “Fuck, I don’t know… could be days, could be months.” He jerks back — days? _Months?_ She looks at him sharply. “But it’ll be never if you don’t eat, it’ll just build and build. Remember what I said about rampages?” Her teeth are bared in a rueful grimace. “And I won’t be able to stop you.”

He slumps back against the table, swallowing dryly. “T-there has to be another way…”

She shakes her head, for once taking no pleasure in his torment. “There isn’t.”

————————

She brings him a two-liter bottle of blood, collected from god knows where, and passes it through the door very quickly, locking it back tight. He picks it up with trepidation, stomach churning from hunger and revulsion both. She gestures vaguely. “Just… get it down quickly.”

“What, all of it?”

“It’s enough to hold you over for a day or so, I’m trusting your willpower to do the rest.”

He snorts ruefully and turns his back on her, uncapping the bottle. The smell hits him like a gut punch, and his throat spasms reflexively. He eyes the redness inside, tongue tracing the points of his new teeth, and steels himself. He tips the bottle up and holds his nose with his other hand, hoping to mask the taste somewhat, but it still sends shivers through his whole body; it’s too intense, and the bottle’s half empty before he notices. He chugs the rest quickly, face burning with shame at the fracturing of his self-control. He finishes it gasping, and sets it down gingerly on the table. He rinses his mouth out with water from the sink in the corner and turns back to the window; at first he doesn’t see her, but theres a puff of black hair in the corner by the door. He goes over and sees her sitting up against the dividing wall, hugging her knees. She jumps a bit at his knock, looking around, and he sits down on the other side of the wall. There’s a tiny covered slot in the door, and she paws it open so they can talk without shouting.

“…better?”

He swallows, throat soothed. “…I think so, yes.”

She nods, chin on her knees. He tries to keep his mind off of his new… instincts, so to speak. “What about you?”

“What?”

“…you should probably eat something. If you’re human now, you’ll need normal food.”

She blinks, frowning. “…well shit.”

“Indeed.”

She glances over her shoulder at him. “So… what do I do?”

“You haven’t told anyone else about this have you?”

“God no, I’m not stupid.”

One anxiety down; if anyone else knew… they’d both be dead in a matter of hours. Or she would be, at the very least, and with her his hopes of reversing the switch. “Good. Take something from the kitchens, and if anyone asks you can say it’s for me.”

She sighs and nods, but doesn’t get up. He watches her through the glass, seeing the tightness of her body. She swallows, shoulders hunched. “I’m sorry…”

He blinks, surprised; he doesn’t think he’s ever heard an apology out of her before. Genuine remorse… Her face is tight, hands clenched around her legs. “I just… fuck, we could die! _I_ could die!” 

His eyes narrow. “Oh, is that it?”

“What?”

“Of course… you’re not sorry, you’re _scared!”_

She bristles and skitters back, facing him now, but all she has to show are flat human teeth. He bares his new fangs and sees her pupils dilate — her eyes are green, now. “You’re human now, you’re not immortal any more.” His gaze settles on the fluttering pulse in her throat and the wheels click together in his head. “…and now… I could do to you what you’ve been doing to me.”

She hisses through her teeth, scrambling to her feet, but he grins and puts a hand on the glass. Her hands ball up into fists. “If you kill me there’s no way to fix it, you’ll never get your humanity back.”

“I don’t need to kill you, I just need… retribution, yes.”

Her lip curls. “You really think you’ll be able to hold yourself back? You may be able to resist entirely but you can’t just _stop_ once you’ve started, not at this stage. It takes years to build up that kind of control, trust me on this shit.”

He swallows, fingers twitching, but shakes his head suddenly, as if to clear it; this isn’t him, this is the, the blood talking, the demon that artifact made him into now. Revenge isn’t as important as staying sane, keeping control of himself. And he’ll be damned if he loses himself to this… thing. 

He turns sharply, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes, and she flees, heart pounding painfully in her chest. She sprints for her old hidey hole, the storage room a floor below, and barricades herself in. Fuck. Fuck!

She feels hot and prickly and quivery and like she’s coming apart at the seams. Things won’t stop _moving_ in her, heart and lungs and her stomach hurts, and her mouth tastes like metal, and oh god she could really die here, so, so easily.

Holy shit.

Mortality is terrifying.


	2. Chapter 2

She has to leave her blanket nest sometime, and that sometime turns out to be rather soon; hunger is something she’s intimately familiar with, and she sneaks down to the kitchens after a few hours of private panicking. She’s… not exactly used to chewing her food, but she bullies the cooks into giving her some kind of stew. They don’t seem to notice anything’s changed. And honestly, she’d rather them believe she’s tenderly spoon-feeding Alad sick in bed than know the truth.

She eats the thing in her storage closet, and is begrudgingly impressed with the flavor.

Then she fetches another bottle from her stash and shoves it through the crack in the containment room door before bolting it shut again. He’s still asleep, she thinks, on his side on the examination table. She hates how easily he’s been reclassified in her head; from “tasty plaything” to “mortal threat”. 

She goes and fetches the artifact from where it had fallen; some kind of crystal, maybe, from the void. It feels like metal, looks like quartz, and makes her want to smash the fucking thing for doing this to them. She shoves it into the containment room, making him turn to look at her. She glowers.

“You figure this out, you’re the smart one here.”

“…you’re going to have to bring me what I need.”

“Whatever, sure.”

So she ends up playing fetch for him, ferrying tools to his quarantine room and eyeing his work from the other side of the glass. There are one or two… embarrassing moments when she forgets her new lack of strength and tries to carry too many things at once. Nevertheless, they pass a few hours this way, Alad hunched over the artifact and ignoring the urge to sprint for the door every time she opens it to slide something else in. 

After a day or so of scattered sleeping and research, she’s slumped against the wall outside, still. He looks around, eyes tired from peering through half a dozen lenses and scribbling notes, chipping away at the block of ignorance surrounding the thing. He’s barely making headway on what the thing’s made of, never mind what it’s meant to do or how it works, and he’s too frustrated to work any more. He’s lost track of time; it must have been several hours, at least, since he last sent her to fetch something for him. He frowns at the slice of ducked head he can see; is she just sitting there?

He stands up, noticing the lack of stiffness in his limbs, and walks over to the glass wall. He can see her slumped against the other side, fiddling with something small and shiny. Oh. A knife.

She starts, suddenly, and cranes her head up at him. He blinks down at her, separated by the glass. He can see the knife better now, it’s one of the blades he had made of silver, part of his efforts to find new ways to subdue her. She almost smiles.

“I can touch it now.”

His mouth twitches. “And I can’t.”

She sheathes it, shoving it into her pocket. “Just a precaution.”

He nods; lord knows he’s familiar with the feeling. “…will you come in? I want to, ah, try something.”

She blinks up at him, and he sees her swallow thickly, then she stands up, resigned. “Suppose I have to, don’t I.” Her face is tight. “Stupid feeling, like I owe you something.”

He snorts. “I dare say you do, after the hell you’ve put me through.”

She huffs, hand on the keypad. “Don’t push your luck.”

He moves back to the opposite wall, to put some space between them, and she snaps the door open and ducks inside, closing it behind her. There’s a breath of silence, and then he blinks and breathes in, surprised. She frowns, her back against the door.

“Tell me what you smell.”

His brow furrows, trying to find words for it. “I think… body smells, sweat, and… is that my soap?”

She laughs, wafting mouth-spice-saliva smell at him, almost making him sneeze. “Fuck, you hadn’t noticed? Been using your stuff for months now.” He sputters, indignant, but she steps towards him. “C’mere, see if you can tell what they gave me from the kitchens earlier.”

She holds her mouth open, _breathing_ at him, and he sniffs delicately, leaning back from her. “Ah… is that the squid stew?”

“Fuck, is that what it was? I couldn’t tell, being restricted to one food source kinda makes everything else irrelevant.” 

He laughs a bit, despite himself, and then his hands clench in a spasm that snaps his teeth together, lurching him in place. She steps back, suddenly on high alert, and there’s some kind of fast, low pulsing in his ears. “…what do you feel?”

He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I… I wanted to… but it’s gone now, it was just a flash.”

“Like the urge to jump from a high place, vertigo.” He nods mutely. She grimaces. “That’s how it is, usually. Don’t try to fight it, just ride it out till it fades. It’ll go away pretty quickly unless you’re hungry.”

They both fall quiet, not looking at each other, and the silence stretches on. She laughs suddenly, bitterly. “Fuck, look at me. My heart’s going so fast it hurts, I haven’t felt that in… god, eons…”

He swallows, mouth dry. “You are scared, aren’t you.”

She snarls, the sound sadly diminished. “Of course I’m scared! I’m so fucking weak like this, and you could do so many things to me, and fuck why am I even in here—”

He draws his lips back from his teeth, anger flaring. “I don’t _want_ to attack you, you know that! And what do you have to be scared of anyway, I’m the one who’s been suffering at your hands! At your teeth! _And_ you’re armed, you could stop me with that knife, I’m sure.” 

She’s backed up against the glass wall now, teeth grit and chin tucked into her chest, hiding her throat. “You don’t understand, I can’t— I won’t be on the receiving end of that, ever again.” 

“Then you’re a hypocrite,” he spits, “everything you’re afraid of, you’ve forced me to go through countless times!” His teeth are bared, hands curled into claws, and she’s pressed up against the glass away from him, smelling of sweat and something tangy that must be fear. It floods his palate, making his head spin. “If I never had to feel that again, heh… I might just sink to your level.”

Her voice is shaking now; he’s never heard it do that before. “Y-you need me, your research— and what happens when the Tenno come for you huh? Zanuka’s good but she’s not that good, you really willing to risk your life like that?”

He smiles slowly, cold eyes glinting. “My research is moving on, _my dear_ , you are overestimating your value to me. And now, I have to wonder… are you worth the pain you cause me?”

She’s fumbling for the knife and the doorhandle both, and he lunges, faster than he expected. One hand slams against the door and she yelps and starts for the other side, but he traps her with his other arm, caging her. At this distance her smell is overwhelming, fearsweat and meat and it makes his mouth prickle with saliva. God he _wants this_ , so badly, like this thing in him has taken all his anger and resentment and given him a way to fulfill them in one fell swoop. And all he has to do is let go.

Her legs are wobbling dangerously, jaw clenching reflexively and trying to bare fangs that aren’t there. “You don’t want to do this, Alad. If I die there’s no way to change you back, you’ll be stuck like this forever!”

“And I’m starting to think that wouldn’t be all that bad. There is the hunger, yes, but the _strength_ ; if I stayed like this I wouldn’t need you to protect me now would I. I’d be unkillable!”

Her lip curls and she presses the point of her freed knife against his sternum. “You know that’s not true, there’s plenty of things that could still kill you, even like this. And are you prepared for the pain? Everything hurts, when you’re dead, and there’s no one capable of loving you enough to make it better!”

He laughs, harshly, and cups her chin in one gloved hand. “Love, is that what you think I’d want? Or… is it what _you_ want? That I would love you? Hah!” He sneers, bringing his face closer to hers and watching her flinch. “ _Never._ ”

She snarls — frighteningly close to how she used to sound — and slashes at his middle; fabric and flesh part and he howls, recoiling back. It burns! She tears herself free and vaults over the examination table in the center of the room, leaving him snatching at her heels. He tears around after her, roaring his anger, and he’s so much faster than her now. She whirls to catch him blade-first but he grabs her knife arm and wrenches it aside and there’s a sharp _crack_ and she screams, high and broken. The knife clatters down and she falls against the worktable, knocking instruments down with her, and he follows her with a snarl. She claws at him with one arm, the other held close to her chest, and kicks savagely, but he hardly seems to notice; he can smell the blood under her skin, so close now, and he needs it so badly—

Teeth puncture skin with a wet _pop_ and he groans, shivering through to his bones. Heat washes over his tongue, down his throat, and he draws deeply, mindless. He doesn’t feel her clawing at him, doesn’t hear her crying and pleading; _no, don’t, please stop, please!_ All he knows is red. 

She’s still fighting, thrashing against him, her one good arm scrabbling at the floor to find something, anything, to fight him with. She feels herself being poured out, drained, killed bit by bit, horror incarnate. Her fingers touch something cool and smooth and she grabs for it, fumbling for purchase. It spins, wobbles, and she gets her hand around it.

In the middle of her swing he catches her wrist, forces it back down, and lifts his head to leer savagely. “Oh, god,” he manages out, his face smeared with blood, _her_ blood, “now I understand, yes, now I see why you are the way you are. This _power_ , ohh, it’s… _intoxicating_ , yes…” 

She struggles to speak, to spit back at him _you know nothing! nothing at all!_ but the words won’t come, choked up in her ruined throat, and the edges of her vision are getting blurry and dim. Still she fights him, straining against his iron grip, but her strength’s gone, and what little is left is flowing into _him_.

His other hand cups her cheek, a cruel echo of how she would cradle his face as she fed; his thumb strokes her cheekbone, tilting her skull back. “Shh my dear, it’ll all be over soon…”

His teeth scythe into her again and she tries to scream, tries to fight, tries to do anything but succumb to the numbing cold, but it’s coming on so fast now, and she can’t breathe—

After what seems like an eternity, he pulls back, breathing hard. There’s blood in his mouth and up his nose and dripping from his chin, and so much of it in a growing puddle around her head, and he feels so… _sated_. He shudders with pleasure, tipping his head back and smiling slowly. Her blood in him, feeding him… a poetic sort of justice. He feels a twinge of regret; he should have kept her longer, to feed from slowly and enact revenge for each and every bite she gave him. But she was right, once he started he couldn’t stop if he’d wanted to, he just ate and ate and ate. And now there’s nothing left of her. 

He regards her corpse with an odd feeling of detachment. Her head is twisted around, displaying the gruesome wreckage of her throat. In her hand lies the artifact, the thing she tried to hit him with. Well, it’s useless now. There’s no going back from this.

He tries to stand, wobbling drunkenly; it takes a few tries to get his feet under him. He steps away, almost slipping in the puddled blood, and makes for the door. It’s locked, still, and he curses and nearly bends the handle out of shape trying to wrench it open, but the bolts holding it shut are stronger than he is, and besides, the blood in his stomach is making him feel warm and complacent. He hadn’t realized how much the chill had seeped into his body until it’s forced to dissipate. He turns instead to the corner where he had been sleeping — a small mattress of blankets and stolen cushions, shoved in one by one — and collapses onto it, smearing blood on the fabric. He’s too tired to care, drained by his exertion and the shock of feeding live, and he passes out almost as soon as his head hits the pillow. 

When he wakes the world is lit faintly in grays and blues, highlighting each surface. His vision, he has found, has become extraordinary; he can see details he never noticed before with fascinating clarity, and he’s sure that in reality the room is too dark for human eyes to function. His gaze falls on the corpse of his enemy, slowly growing stagnant; the scent of blood and meat still hangs around it like an alluring miasma, and he licks his lips slowly, tasting the dried crust of blood. There’s some sort of trick of the light playing in the air over the body, a slowly swirling fog or midair reflection. As he watches it seems to grow denser, pulsing with a strange, faint light. He frowns; he cannot tell what he’s seeing, if it’s real or just an illusion.

All at once the mist surges upwards, coalescing rapidly into a humanoid form; arms, head, torso, fading down into the vague suggestion of legs that seem to lose cohesion and merge into a faint smear. The figure’s head is bowed, face in their glimmering hands, and their short hair waves about their head as if underwater. They stay like that, floating between corpse and ceiling, for almost a full minute. Alad swallows, suddenly fearful.

Suddenly the figure whips its head up, rage suffused on its smoky face, and Alad recoils; its eyes are black pits, huge and empty in its sallow face.

“You…”

Then it — she! — screams, a terrible sound that makes him clap his hands over his ears, and she convulses in midair. “YOU! YOU KILLED ME! YOU KILLED ME!”

She seems to split, to begin to tear apart, the surrounding air warping and writhing along with her ghostly form, and she screams her accusations, searing his brain with her fury.

_“YOU KILLED ME!”_

She flies at him, howling, and he yells and scrambles back against the wall, but she just passes through him and wall both with a feeling like plunging into icy water. He gasps and scrabbles at his chest, eyes wide, but there’s nothing, he’s unharmed. His head whips around, feeling like his heart would have been pounding if it still had the capacity to beat, but he sees no sign of her. The ghost is gone.


	3. Chapter 3

He does not sleep again that night. Or that day, for that matter. He cleans himself as best he can in the small sink set into the counter, scrubbing the blood from his face and hands. Then he paces the width of his prison, filled with a nervous energy that does not dissipate upon morning, even though the space outside his cell gradually brightens. The room containing the specimen cells has no windows, a fact for which he is ever more grateful, but he is still trapped inside, and now with a putrefying corpse to keep him company. He finds himself unable to look at her face.

He is not yet sure if what he saw was real or just the fevered product of his mind, but morning brings with it the dregs of his conscience. There’s no denying what he’s done, no denying that he is responsible for the lifeless body on the floor. This in and of itself is not all that troubling to him; lord knows he’s killed plenty of his own test subjects, Grineer and Corpus alike, and countless Tenno collected for their parts. No, what bothers him is _why_. 

He killed her for hunger.

He killed her for pleasure.

He killed her out of anger, to teach her a lesson, he killed her because she ran and he pursued and this is what he is, now, a predator, a killer, a monster.

These are all ignoble reasons, and they make him turn away from her in shame. The question slithers into his mind; can he do it again? He certainly wants to do it again, this new thing inside him wants, no, _craves_ such acts. He remembers the way her flesh opened under his teeth, the flood of hot, rich life into his mouth. There, even thinking about it is enough to set his mouth watering again. He swallows thickly, conflicted. It was exhilarating, but— more than his conscience, his pride rebells at it. He is a prideful man, civilized and composed, and such… animalistic urges, so out of his control, repulse him. They repulsed him when she had displayed them, and now that they are within his own body, he is disgusted with himself.  
But at the same time… he knows he will not be able to resist. The urges are strong, stronger than when he was half-turned on her blood, and now he has the strength and speed to act on them. He looks down at his hands, flexing them. His strength… he broke her arm so easily, without even meaning to, and her blows did nothing to him. Even through his mental fog he feels a thrill at this, the excitement of power. He looks up, sharply, at the glass wall of his prison. Without him noticing, the day had worn on, edging slowly towards evening. Surely…

He steps forward and braces both hands on the glass. He pushes, tentatively at first but soon reaching for the unknown limits of his strength. The glass has the audacity not to respond. After maybe two minutes of straining he gives up, muttering a curse. There’s got to be a way out of here now, and he has to find it fast, before his hunger grows again and strips away his reason. And… he needs to keep his mind occupied. He can’t let himself think about her absence.

But, of course, this works about as well as trying consciously not to think of a certain thing usually does; even as he searches for a way to break the window, his thoughts are suffused with her. She’s… she’s really gone. Really dead. He finds himself oddly melancholy. He’s free now, he reminds himself irritably, fishing through a drawer for something hammer-like, he’ll never have to suffer at her hands again. But at the same time… he desired her, he admits bitterly, his body wanted hers in a stupid, animal way that he did his best to squash. But he would not call that _love_. He did not enjoy her company, he did not respect what little intellect she had, and he was often outright disgusted by her. But he did have fantasies…

He shakes his head sharply, cutting off that train of thought before it goes somewhere unpleasant, and sifting through another drawer of instruments. There, a tool for puncturing the skull, decades obsolete. He grabs it, hammer in his other hand, and strides over to the window. He kneels and starts chiseling at the glass, trying to force it to crack. It chips instead, sending stinging shards pinging off the floor and his face. He growls in frustration, then stops and frowns at the sound he just made. He tries it again, producing a throaty vibration unlike any sound he ever made as a human. He swallows, a bit unnerved, and doggedly goes back to his chiseling.

It doesn’t work. He puts a dent the size of a fist in the glass, carving out splintering chunks, and he supposes that given enough time he could chisel a hole large enough to climb through, but he doesn’t have time and he’s running out of patience. Angrily, he throws his tools down and stalks around the room, grinding his teeth. Nothing’s working, and the smell of Rocket’s corpse has permeated his sinuses, and he’s getting claustrophobic, and he wants out of the damn cell already!

He only realizes he’s picked up the chair after it’s left his hands. It sails through the air and crashes against the window with a deafening sound, and a pattern of spiderweb cracks bursts into being in the glass pane. He stares, astounded, but quickly laughs and grabs the dented chair again. Brute force! Barbaric, but effective.

He swings his club again, lengthening the cracks, and on the third swing the window bursts outward, shattering with an almost musical sound. He cackles and clambers out of the hole, heedless of the glass crunching under his feet. He hurries quickly to his chambers, making it in record time — his new speed, no doubt. Hastily, he pages in an announcement reassigning all personnel outside of this section of the gas city. Better not to be around humans until he’s sorted himself out, and the longer he can keep this a secret the better.

That done, he exhales a long, slow breath. First things first; he needs to bathe. 

He turns the jets on high and hot and strips down to his underthings. His coat is probably stained, spattered with blood all down the front, and the shirt under it has a long horizontal slash through the fabric. Blinking, he reaches for his abdomen, remembering the bite of that silver knife, but his skin is smooth and unmarred. It must have healed while he slept, glutted on her blood. Speaking of which…

He grimaces, reluctant, but he can’t avoid it forever. He steps in front of the mirror and examines his face.

His eyes are red.

His skin is pale, but it’s always been pale, and there’s little noticeable difference now. Perhaps the lines of his face are a little sharper, perhaps there’s less of a pinkish tint under the skin, but, despite everything, it’s still him. Then he opens his mouth and it’s the farthest from him it could ever be.

His teeth have gone long and pointed, the most prominent being his four canines; they curve out into sharp points, stopping just short of protruding from his lips, and the rest look just as sharp, if not as long. He prods them gingerly with his tongue, feeling the solidness of them. How easily these fangs ripped her life from her…

He shakes his head, drawing back from the mirror. No, no. None of that now. He turns sharply, steam starting to fill the room, and finishes undressing. His headpiece stays on, it’s bolted into his skull after all, but it’s the only thing that does. Socks, gloves, underwear; for the first time in a week he’s bare. His skin is sticky with accumulated grime, and he steps under the spray with relish.

The heat suffuses him, seeping into his bones, and he groans in pleasure. He savors the first few minutes, allowing himself that luxury, then he reaches for his soaps. He scrubs himself down thoroughly, not leaving an inch of skin unclean, and finds the action therapeutic. He stays under the spray a long while, and emerges feeling much more human than any time in the past week. He dresses himself in soft bedclothes out of habit, but despite the long heat of the shower he doesn’t feel tired. He debates trying anyway, but remembers the mess he left in the containment cell. He grimaces, but practicality urges him to address it sooner rather than later. Better not leave it for some hapless crewman to find. 

It must be past midnight by the time he returns to his former cell, climbing back in through the shattered window; he would use the door like a civilized person, but he never found out the code she keyed in to lock it. No matter, he’ll have it deprogrammed soon. The smell inside is almost overpowering, and he nearly gags and claps a hand over his mouth and nose. Her blood has congealed into a sticky sludge on the floor, and rigor mortis is in full effect. He crouches gingerly, outside of the puddle range, and wonders what to do with her. 

Suddenly, bands of icy coldness close around his neck. He gasps, chokes, and stumbles forward, turning and landing badly across the body’s legs. The specter is there again, filling his vision and clasping incorporeal hands around his throat, and he tries to skitter backwards, panic filling his chest. 

_“Don’t touch my body,”_ she hisses, malice oozing from every inch of her. He stammers, mouth working like a fish.

“H-how…”

Her lip curls, showing human teeth. “How am I here?”

He nods mutely, acutely aware of the conspicuous void in his chest where a pounding heart should be. Her sneer is exactly as it was in life. Or un-life, depending on how you looked at it. “ _You killed me_ , Alad. Apparently no matter how I die, it’s never going to _fucking take_.”

She reaches a hand for him and he flinches back, but it passes right through with only a chill to mark its presence. “Look at what you’ve done to me. I can’t even touch you now.” She floats around him, circling like a shark, suddenly smiling maliciously. “Oh but look at _you_ , too. Stole my powers and my life, and you’re going to pay for it. Open that mouth of yours and let me see the goods.”

He gapes, indignant and probably in shock, and she takes the opportunity to peer into his mouth, sucking air through her teeth. “Oh I’m jealous, they’re almost like mine were.” She lifts her head to look him in the eye, aggressive and luminous. “If there’s one good thing about this it’s that I’m not scared any more. What’s there to be scared of, you’ve already done your worst! And now you can’t touch me at all.” 

She looms in at him, crowding into his space with a chill that makes his skin crawl. “You’re going to suffer with this, I hope you know that. You’re going to break, become what you’ve always hated. You’re going to be no better than me.”

His teeth are chattering, eyes wide with panic. “N-no, I—”

Her grin is gleeful, her form starting to flicker like a bad screen rendering. “Yes! You’re going to get all you deserve and more. For torturing me, for _killing me_. Murderer! MURDERER!”

Her voice has risen to shattering pitch, the world seeming to shake with each syllable, and he breaks free of his paralysis and scrambles up, shuddering when he passes through her. She shrieks and grabs for him, but he’s out the window and fleeing before he can think. She jitters, glitching in and out, and he sees flickers of her as he runs, reaching, screaming, coming for him.

A scream of his own rips from his throat and he bolts into his room, slamming the door behind him and clutching his chest, wide-eyed with panic. He hears the echoes of her screams far away, howls of rage stuttering through to broken wailing and crying, sounds that make him want to press his hands over his ears and forget she ever existed.

He sinks to the ground, slumped against his door, and weeps.


End file.
